My Relationship With Failure

Failure and I have known each other for a very long time now.

Even before I understood who I was, failure seemed to know exactly where to find me.

It appeared in the opportunities I didn’t get, in so many dreams that didn’t work out and all the plans that collapsed despite all my efforts. Failure showed up in moments when I looked around and watched as other people moved forward while I remained painfully stuck in the same place.

For so many years, I treated failure like my real enemy.

Every encounter felt too personal and every single setback felt like proof that I wasn’t smart enough, talented enough, prepared enough, or worthy of anything good.

I believed successful people lived in a different world. I defined this different world of successful people as; a place where things worked out, where doors opened without stress, where hard work always produced the desired result. Meanwhile, failure seemed determined to follow me everywhere I went.

The more it appeared, the more I resented it.

I tried to outrun it.

I tried to even hide from it.

I tried to pretend it didn’t affect me at all.

But failure is a very stubborn companion.

So the harder I pushed it away, the more it seemed to stay in place.

What made our relationship so difficult was that failure never arrived alone.

It often came along with a lot of embarrassment, self-doubt and comparison.

I felt the shame of wondering whether everyone else had figured out something I had somehow missed and couldn’t seem to figure out no matter how hard I tried.

There were moments when I questioned entire seasons of my life in confusion.

Moments when I wondered if I should stop trying altogether or just give up trying. Yes!

But failure has a way of making you believe the story is over when, in reality, it is only changing chapters and going in circles.

Looking back now, I realize that I misunderstood failure completely

I thought it was judging me.

In truth, it was developing me, building me up for the future I had to face.

At the time, I couldn’t see or understand that at all.

All I could see was the total disappointment and embarrassment.

What I didn’t truly realize was that every setback was quietly building something inside of me that success alone never could, not even in a thousand years.

Failure helped me build; resilience, patience, adaptability and humility.

I was also able to build the ability to continue moving forward when certainty disappears.

Those qualities were not formed during my victories, no.

They were forged in the moments I thought I had lost everything and was too weak to attempt one more.

. . .

My Relationship With Failure Changed

At some point in my journey, my relationship with failure changed completely for good. However, this change didn’t happen overnight.

I didn’t have any big breakthrough, life-changing quotes or a single moment when everything suddenly made sense.

The truth is, I simply became tired.

Tired of carrying the weight of every disappointment.

Tired of measuring my worth by outcomes I truly couldn’t fully control.

Tired of believing that every setback was a reflection of who I was rather than a part of what I was experiencing.

For years, I had treated failure like a courtroom.

Every mistake felt like full evidence.

Every rejection felt like a complete sentence and every unmet expectation felt like proof that I wasn’t enough.

For me, the verdict was always the same:

You should have done better.

You should have known more.

You are falling behind.

Eventually, I began to notice something.

The people I admired most weren’t the people who had avoided failure, no.

They were the people who had walked through it and kept going.

They had lost opportunities, made so many mistakesand taken wrong turns.

They had started over.

Again and again and again.

Yet somehow, they weren’t defined by those experiences.

Rather, they were strengthened by them.

That realization forced me to question something I had never questioned before:

What if failure wasn’t the real problem?

What if my relationship with failure was the real problem.?

Slowly, my perspective began to shift.

Instead of seeing failure as evidence that I should quit, I started seeing it as evidence that I was trying.

After all, nobody fails at something they never made an attempt at.

Nobody gets rejected from opportunities they never really pursued.

Nobody falls short of goals they never set for themselves.

Failure is often the price of participation and the people we admire most are rarely the people who avoided failure.

They are the people who learned how to survive it against all odds.

So somewhere along the way, failure stopped being a verdict for me.

It became feedback, the only one I needed.

Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” I began asking, “What is this trying to teach me?”

That single shift changed everything for me because lessons can be used, feedback can be applied and growth can be built upon.

But shame keeps us stuck.

The moment I stopped treating failure as an identity and started treating it as information, I gave myself permission to grow and growth begins where self-condemnation ends.

. . .

Failure Is Still My True Companion Today!

Today, I still fail of course!

I make big mistakes.

I choose the wrong path sometimes too.

I invest time in things that don’t work out eventually.

I disappoint myself and start over again.

Occasionally, I still wonder if I should have known better but I no longer view failure the way I once did.

I no longer see it as a sign that I am incapable.

Rather, I see it as a reminder that I am still growing.

The truth is that success has appeared in chapters of my life.

Failure has been there for the entire story.

It has challenged me, humbled me, frustrated me so many times and strengthened me greatly.

When I had to rebuild my life in a different country from scratch, I experienced a kind of failure I had never prepared for. Dreams were interrupted. Plans changed. Certainty completely disappeared.

Yet those difficult years taught me lessons no comfortable season ever could.

Failure introduced me to resilience when I wanted to quit so bad.

Patience when I wanted immediate answers.

Courage when I was afraid to begin again, with nothing.

While I would never claim to enjoy failure, I can finally admit something I once thought impossible:

Some of the best things in my life exist because failure refused to leave me alone.

Perhaps, that is the strange thing about failure.

We spend our lives trying to avoid it.

We fear it.

We resent it deeply.

We hide it from others and sometimes even from ourselves.

However, the companion we spend the most time running from may be the one that reveals who we truly are.

Success tells us what we achieved, not at all.

Rather, it shows us what we are made of.

And if I am honest, when I look back on the defining moments of my life, I do not see a story shaped by victories alone.

I see a story shaped by every time I fell, questioned myself, stood up again, and continued forward anyway. The times I had no choice other than to keep moving forward.

Failure never became my friend but it became something far more valuable.

It became my teacher and some of life’s most important lessons can only be learned in its classroom.

Life, is a classroom.

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This post was previously published on Pen With Paper.

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